For centuries, fishing communities all over the world have used fish oil for various purposes. In 16th century England, it was very commonly used by fishermen to treat a plethora of health issues as varied as wounds, body-aches, common colds and even skin diseases.
The current upsurge in its popularity is thanks to an early 1970’s Danish study on Greenland Eskimos. The researchers observed that in spite of the extremely high-fat diet of the Eskimos, incidence of heart attacks and other cardiovascular diseases was very low. They concluded that the real reason for this was ironically, the high-fat fish diet that the Eskimos consumed. They found that this diet had a high concentration of a particular type of unsaturated fatty acid called Omega 3 fatty acid.